Nobel Prize in economics goes to Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt and Joel Mokyr

Excellent choices.  Here is the press release with links to longer discussions of their works.

This is a prize for economic growth, and for the ideas of creative destruction.  Those are some of the most important ideas in economics, so I could not be happier with this pick.  Joel Mokyr in particular has been a long-time associate of GMU and Mercatus, so I would like to congratulate him in particular.

Aghion is at INSEAD in France, Howitt at Brown, and Mokyr at Northwestern.  It is also nice to see some people outside of “the usual schools” winning the prize.  Aghion and Howitt, of course, worked together to produce a model of creative destruction and economic growth.  Here are their key papers together.

Joel Mokyr is an economic historian, and best known for his pioneering work in explaining the Industrial Revolution in England.  Here are his best-known works.  Read The Lever of Riches and The Gifts of Athena and A Culture of Growth.  I have benefited most from The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850.  He has a new book coming out in November, with Tabellini and Greif.  It is correct to consider him as an “Enlightenment thinker.”  Brian Albrecht has a good thread on this.

Below you can find individual posts on Aghion, Howitt, and also Mokyr.  Here is Alex’s post on the prize.